The Man from the Ice
by A Little Lost 1
Summary: He was fire, was the first thing Steve thought of the boy when they met. He was fire and the whole world would burn when he did.


He was fire, was the first thing Steve thought of the boy when they met. He was fire and the whole world would burn when he did.

Steve was freshly woken from the ice and everything felt far too new, went by far too fast. Nothing was the same anymore, and Steve couldn't keep up. So Fury sent him to Amestris. His mission: gather as much information as you can while working for the Amestrian government as part of a treaty made between Fury and the country's Fuhrher.

And for a time, it worked. The technology in the isolated country mirrored that of Gemany's in the early nineteen hundreds and it was right up his alley. Steve did odd jobs for the man he worked for and he kept his head down and acclimated to the military culture of the new country with ease. It wasn't so different from the America he had left after all.

Except for the Alchemy.

Of course, Steve had been briefed about Alchemy before he had been sent here, had been told that there were specialized alchemists in the military. In fact, Fury had told him to report specifically on these men and women whenever he could because for all that SHIELD worked in intelligence, even they had no idea how the secret art worked. Steve remembered-later when talking with Edward about his past- this fact and wondered at the extent of the Amestrian ability to horde secrets like other countries horded money.

But, being told the bare minimum of alchemy was nothing like witnessing the practice of it in real life.

The first time Steve saw alchemy in use was also the first time he met the Elric brothers. It was about a month into his stay and he had been reassigned to another city, Central. He was to meet his new CO and begin his duties as soon as he was able and the 70 year old man walked into Central prepared to meet-and-greet and than settle into a comfortable position as he had at the last base.

Steve checked in at the front desk and was told to wait for his superior to meet him In a few minutes, and Steve did as he was told, just as he had always done before, ever the perfect soldier. Steve should have known than, as the thought crossed his mind, that there would soon come a day where he would stop being the man he was still pretending to be. But he instead brushed the thought away and let it stay where he thought it belonged, at the back of his mind with memories of a world he could no longer reach.

"Rodgers?" A feminine voice asked sternly behind him, and the tall man turned to face the questioner. The woman was slightly above average height with serious brown eyes and short blonde hair. Her posture was straight and something about her spent a pang through him at the memory of Peggy. To him, the love of his life had only been gone two months.

Steve brushed the feeling away, as he had done so many times before, "Yes ma'am."

The woman nodded, stern but not cold, and turned with a gesture at him to follow. Like the good soldier he was, he did. The pair walked through the brightly lit building, sunlight streaming in from floor to ceiling windows, at a brisk pace and the silence between the two persisted until they had walked up a flight of stairs and stopped in front of large door.

The woman knocked and was met with a muffled, "Come in."

The door swung open and Steve was met with a normal looking office that, despite looking similar to the office he had left behind in his former position, felt warm and friendly in ways the other had not. The men around the room froze where they had been caught and Steve took them in quickly.

The one closest to them had a ball of paper crunched into his hand and had his arm arched back to throw at another man across the room who was in a similar position. Between them, paper balls littered the floor and their desks. Steve- when he was telling Sam about the incident later- would describe the signatures on the balls of paper in detail and Sam would laugh, long and hard, and the both of them would forget for a moment that the world was falling apart around them.

The other men in the room were in various states of less-than-professional positions, the foremost being the man sleeping on his desk at the end of the room. The silence caused by the entrance of the woman and Steve persisted as the men comically lowered their arms and the others straightened in their seats and pulled discarded files back to the center of their desks at the woman's harsh stare.

By the end of the slow process, there was no evidence of the chaos that had been the office aside from the paper balls still criss-crossing the room. The blonde haired woman stepped purposefully over the paper towards the still-sleeping man at the end of the room and Steve followed a little less purposefully.

The woman cleared her throat, "Sir."

The dark haired man looked up blearily and at the sight of the woman's face, straightened purposefully, hand picking up the pen that lay next to him and reaching for a piece of paper at the top of the large stack that dominated the desk top. Steve almost laughed at the reaction.

The woman's face remained impassive, but Steve saw the fond glint in her eyes, "This is Steve Rodgers, Sir."

The man looked up from the paperwork he had been pretending to fill out and dark almost black eyes observed Steve shrewdly. He stood up than, rising to an average height, and held out his hand for Steve to shake (Steve would remember this moment later, when events had played out and good men had died, and he would play the What If game that Heroes used to torture themselves), "Colonel Roy Mustang."

Their hands clasped and it was at that moment that the door to the room was kicked open by a fiery whirlwind and Steve's perspective of how the world worked was changed irrevocably once again.

AN: Hi everyone. This is the first chapter of a two shot I'm writing. The two shot will not cross over with the rest of the Avengers, but I am putting it in this category because I plan on waking this a part of a series of two shots and one shots that have the marvel world, specifically the Avengers, crossing over into the world of Fullmetal. This one obviously features Steve. Drop a review if you have any idea you'd like to contribute to the series!


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